


Ano Day

by joeysharku



Series: Tolkien Discord Prompts [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 20:41:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15518172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joeysharku/pseuds/joeysharku
Summary: The rizgurim (called gnomes by the Men of Esgaroth) celebrate the festival of Ano Day!





	Ano Day

The colors were incredible, beyond Antwise’s imagining. Reds, blues, some kind of mix between the two, and more besides! What  _ had _ the ladies used for dye? As the little rizg wandered awe-struck through the crowd of running boggits waving marvelously colored flags, he found himself overtaken with that ever-young, never-old, undying-one-might-say-if-one-wants of Ano Day.

If the truth be told, Antwise hadn’t expected to be swept up so. At a tender twenty-eight years he’d been noted as a typical tweenish sourface, always scoffing at traditions and the like. It was very daring, and very kneebending as the old shrinkers thought the boggits said, to say things like, “bah, Ano Day, feh! We see the sun ev’ry day! What’s a rizg to do about it, eh? Drop all ‘is mudwork and contractin’ and go all the way to Granhobba’s?! Nay!” Antwise had said something like it himself when his muther had asked what day he’d like to set out; the look on her face was indeed kneebending! And of course he’d grumbled the whole way, once she’d convinced him to come. Now, Antwise was no fool. He hadn’t  _ decided _ to have a bad time, but he genuinely felt that he’d outgrown Ano Day. Not to mention that he wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to tease his muther. Now that he was here, though, at Granhobba’s, where  _ all _ the rizgurim gather every eleven years, with all the music and colors and wafting smoke… why, he felt like a boggit himself! 

“Now, Antwise,” his muther said. “Don’t go getting lost just yet. We must go pay our respects to Granhobba.”

“Oh, fungusroads!” he scoffed. “What for? So the blind bat can pretend to remember me, kiss my cheek, and move onto the next poor riz- ow!” Muther’s bag came down hard on his head, and from the weight of it, Antwise could tell she was saving plenty of her jawbreaking biscuits for the journey home.

“Now that’s just enough, Anty! Granhobba was there on the first Ano Day, the day we became rizgurim, so you’re just gonna march your tweeny feet up to her, take the kiss  _ no matter how bad she smells _ , and say ‘thankya, granny’! Besides,” his muther added as an afterthought, “who knows how much longer she’ll live.”

Antwise rubbed his head and winced at the tender swelling. “Ah, Mum, what ya talking about? If the Granhobba was one of the orkeys she’d have to be over a hundred hundred years old! Any rizg with half a brain knows they just take the oldest shrinker by the River, paint ‘er green and plop ‘er down so’s the boggits have someone to tell their wishes.”

“Well that may be, Antwise, but seeing the Granhobba was your fuhther’s fa-favorite Ano Day tra-tradition and -”

“Alright, alright, stop your cryin’. We’ll go see the old bag.”

The line to see Granhobba spanned the length of the clearing and deep into the nearby trees. Antwise made a few snide remarks about how they weren’t even at the festival any longer but disapproving looks from some of the older men shut him up. It was even worse when they broke the treeline and could see again that the Ano Day events were in full swing - barrel racing, poetry reading, archery, ale, and burping contests, dancing, dirty dancing… and Antwise was missing all of it! He moaned softly but only once, and spent the next hour gritting his teeth while his muther twitted on about Ano Days past. Finally, they came to the low tent in which the Granhobba waited to receive the razgurim one by one.

His muther went in first, spent a few dozen seconds, and came out in happy tears. “Oh, she looks just as hardy as ever!” She hugged her son and whispered, “and smells twice as bad! Have fun!” Antwise rolled his eyes and threw open the tent.

Sitting on a pile of furs, surrounded by gifts and goblets filled with ale, and shaking with her great age was the Grandhobba. She was hideous, and indeed reeked with some ancient body odor. Her face was a pinched mass of wrinkles with a monstrously gnarled nose and milky eyes in loose sockets. Antwise recognized her from the last Ano Day, and the Ano Day before that but those were his only two so it didn’t mean she  _ wasn’t _ an imposter. Still, he had to admit that it’d take a lot more than grassdye to make her up so awfully.

“Hullo, Granhobba.”

~

The ancient orc stirred. She’d been asleep. In fact, she spent most of her days asleep and even Ano Day was no exception. It was easy to slip in and out now that she’d lost her sight.  _ Even the aging has its silver veins; now let’s see... _ the voice… male, with that southern bank accent, a little deeper than most, a little self-assured, even more self-conscious… ah!

“Antwise?” her wavering voice offered.

“Oh! Uh, yes, I’m Antwise, son of…” 

“Antose ‘n’ Inwin, yes, yes. Ha!” she barked, sending spittle down her chin. She hoped it disgusted the little rizg. Oh, she loved all her softskin brood but she did also love to tease their delicate sensibilities. “Didn’t think Ah’d memba ya? Well, well, why ya waitin’? C’mere m’slug!”

She heard the rizg nervously approach, and then pause. “Granhobba?”

“Eh?!” Her voice was like a shrieking bat and she cackled when she heard Antwise jump.

“Are you  _ really _ one of the old orkeys?”

Dûgla’s mind slipped suddenly back, over a thousand years, to the tunnels in which she was born. They had fled - the world might have gologs and the sun, yes, true, but the tunnels had  _ demons _ . Great beings of fire and shadow and terror that could slaughter whole tribes with no trouble at all. Nobody knew what they were or where they’d come from but they had enslaved the orcs for as long as anybody remembered. So they had fled, her whole tribe, out of the tunnels and under the furious stars. They found the river, and buried themselves in its mud to escape the great star. 

It was killing them. The older orcs, who once could expect to live forever if they were meaner and cleverer than the rest, died first. Horrible bulbous growths cursed their bodies and it wasn’t long before the sun was blamed. Some of the orcs wanted to return to the tunnels. Some did. But by then Dûgla had a boggart, the first that wasn’t immediately snatched by an overseer, one she could finally love, and decided mortal freedom was better than immortal slavery. Most agreed, so they’d stayed, and had boggarts - lots of laughing, running,  _ free _ little bastards. Those boggarts had boggarts, and their boggarts had boggarts, and so on and so on until their soft lives made them a soft people and they were the rizgurim - the river folk. They could live in the sun, even trade with men and gologs. All the while the orcs died one by one until only Dûgla was left.

“Granhobba?”

Dûgla returned to the utterly dark heat of the present. Her eyes stung with fresh tears but they leaked plenty anyway so she didn’t pay it any mind. “Ah, c’mere slug.” Antwise approached and, after the briefest hesitation, leaned over. She pushed saliva over her lips and planted a massive, sloppy kiss on the rizg’s cheeks. To his credit, she heard no protest, not even the slightest moan. 

“Aye, Ah know Ah don’t lookit but Ah really am that old!” she laughed. “Say, Antwise, what day izzit?”

The rizg couldn’t prevent some bluster from being heard. “Why, it’s Ano Day, granny.”

“Oh? Wuz that?”

Antwise said nothing for a long while. Dûgla thought happily about the others waiting outside. Finally he said, “i-it’s Sun Day, Grandhobba. The day we celebrate the sun.”

“Ha! Show’s what you know! Cel’brate the sun? Feh! Who likes the sun?”

“I-I don’t understand.”

The ancient orc laughed. “Maybe one day, if you’re very sweet to a very nice rizga, you will. Now stop holdin’ up the line!”

**Author's Note:**

> It could probably use more baking to be a real story and not a sketch like last time but I find I'm happy with these freeflowing pieces in response to the prompts. Comments appreciated!


End file.
